K.V. Johansen

Also also, I want to find out what happens in the end of Raven, and so do you, and this requires the last 30,000 words. (Yes, at 100,000 I have reached the point where I have an outline and scraps of actual prose for the end, but even then, things diverge and surprise me.)

A row of cartoon ravens jumping up and down on a branch saying, "Book! Book! Book ...!" That's what I need. Also to remember my friend is waiting for his bass and I'm not allowed to go building guitar kits again till this book is done.

You know, unplugging the ethernet cable when not actively doing email could be a useful tool on the desktop these days. It would require actually getting up and going around the back of the desk, a commitment, so that the mind could say, no, I don't really need to open a browser. I have the power!

And, of course, fix my resolve to stop collapsing into weary reading of Wikipedia articles or, less healthily, doomscrolling social media, every time I sit down at my desk. It's like I stop moving and I fall over. Brain is tired.

Sunny the rest of the week, so I need to rake bags of leaves for insulation and run the lawnmower over the rest, once things dry off from the showers.

Well, late start day at OFJ and aside from frittering time on here I was doing what people call admin stuff, but I still didn't get the water bill paid. A task for tonight on a different computer.

I wonder if your blueberries & maple might come back from the roots if you get them well-watered before winter. Maples do that; my Japanese maples used to winterkill to the ground before the winters got milder here in the last few years & lowbush blueberries are often burned; hybrids might revive.

She looks like she's contemplating mischief.

But before I go, trying to decide ... I am going to @tricon-hfx.bsky.social in May & also have a new book out in the spring (Breath and Bone): should I also go to @canconsffh.bsky.social in October? Can I afford it? Will you be all excited & want to talk to me about Breath and Bone in Ottawa?

I'm going to try to finish Raven by Christmas. I used to be able to write like that.

Carney: Up until now, more than 70 cents of every dollar of military capital spending by our government has gone to the United States.

With our new Defense Investment Agency, we’ll make sure we build more of our security and defense capabilities here at home

Carney: But this decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship with the United States is now over. And as a consequence, many of our former strengths as a country—more particularly, our economic strengths based on close ties to America—have now become our vulnerabilities…

As the big dying sugar maple has to come down this fall/winter, I will at least have lots of mulch for next year.

The Japanese maple that was doing worst (also from seed and weirdly, the oldest yet also the smallest) started to shrivel but pails of water did seem to save it.

I'm hoping the pails of water I dumped on it will have been enough for the roots to still be live and get through the winter. It's not planted in the best place, but I have a small yard, not a proper arboretum.

"Almost half of everything AI assistants tell you is wrong" and "Oxford university gives AI assistants to all its students" are two headlines we are forced to accept as coexisting in this appalling timeline.

Original autumn landscape oil painting by Tisha Mark, "Autumn Mini No. 2504" 4"x4" oil on Ampersand Gessobord (2025). A tiny textured autumn landscape painting with a tree with red foliage in the center of a clearing with yellowish green grass, underneath a blue sky with lavender clouds and yellow sunlight.

Tiny autumn babe 🎨

Tisha Mark ©2025, Autumn Mini No. 2504, oil on gessobord, 4"x4"

Original is available:
tishamark.com/product/autu...

#art #painting #bsnm #TraditionalArt

Heute feiern alle Ukrainer – Internationaler Baumwolltag

Und besonders begeht ihn der SBU – die Hauptexperten für „Baumwollproduktion“ für die Russische Föderation. Dank des Gottesdienstes „erblühen“ ständig die russischen Raffinerien, Militärflugplätze und Munitionslager in hellem Flammen.

Pouring, now, from the sound of it!

I enjoyed this interview!! Good questions in here haha

But the showers continue, at least!

My metasequoia that I grew from a seed dropped all its needles back in early September; they just shrivelled up and fell, not the usual thing of turning autumn-rust-colour and shedding. I fear it may not revive in spring.

Mostly showers, rather than any good drenching all-day rains. The garden has perked up, the shrubs look better, but nothing to help replenish the water table after the summer and fall of drought, alas.

Sun is just coming up here; horizon like pewter and a cloudy darkness above, with a tree full of silent crows.

Also Elder-Clothesline-Repair Mark Two, due to mother, aunt, chainsaw, tree, "a serious miscalculation" of angles. (Aunt is usually very accurate.)

Could maybe have done with more writing time.

Also, do NOT call elderly, non-computer-literate people stupid when they call your technical service help line for help in getting their internet to work again. After the previous incidence of this, she refuses to call Aliant at all. But the world demands she have internet to receive her bills.

Took an extra day and tried for a weekend of intensive writing; had a weekend of insomnia and Elder-Internet-Assistance instead. If you have to put in a Secret Password after rebooting the modem, give the customer the Secret Password when you set up the @#$%^ unstable modem!

Call me a luddite but I kind of prefer the old version of the Devil who used to put a murrain on crops and command his demon dogs to terrorise church congregations to the new one who insists on having an app for everything and gets rich by designing clever ways of capitalising on people's fatigue.

If a fascist takes over your government then overthrow him, if a fascist invades your country then destroy him, if a fascist exists it is your duty to defeat him. There are no negotiations with fascists.

Book and season are out of joint and the real year keeps lapping the book and racing onwards.